It was necessary that primitive society, in the absence
of elaborate machinery for doing things, in unstable and precarious
food conditions, and without resources accumulated from preceding
generations, should utilize _all_ its forces. The struggle for
existence, in its harshest sense, was but little mitigated, and
no group could have spared at all the industry of women. Even if
primitive life had been as hard as Hobbes would have it, "solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short," mere negative, habitual hardness
and miserableness of condition did not get the attention of primitive
society particularly. Their life was hard, as we look at it, not as
they looked at it. They could not compare themselves with the future,
and comparisons with the past were doubtless in their favor. The best
returns from activity will of course follow when each individual
is doing something he is specially well fitted to do, and natural
selection seems to have seen to it that primitive society should so
divide the labor as best to utilize social energy by assigning to men
the tasks requiring violent exertion, and to women those requiring
constant attention.
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